


Time is Binding

by telm_393



Category: No Children - The Mountain Goats (Song)
Genre: Codependency, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/M, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Married Couple, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-26
Updated: 2018-05-26
Packaged: 2019-05-14 02:18:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14760728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/telm_393/pseuds/telm_393
Summary: Cam will never let go. He will certainly never end things of his own volition, no matter how badly Inez hurts him, no matter how destructive they are towards each other.(There is a fine line between love and hate. Cam and Inez cross it several times a day.)





	Time is Binding

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alchemise](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alchemise/gifts).



> Thank you to within_a_dream for betaing and indulging my need for constant reassurance.

They’re not good people, that’s the crux of the problem.

They’re never going to love each other in an appropriate way, even though, to be entirely fair, Cam doesn’t know if there’s an ‘appropriate’ way to love anyone. In fact, considering the books he’s read, the movies he’s watched, it wouldn't be so far-fetched to say that the truest, rawest way to love someone is to be fucked up about it, so really he and Inez have the most classically romantic relationship out of all of their friends.

Good for them.

+

They met when they were both nine years old, and the first thing he ever said to her, that deathless phrase that begat a relationship of twenty years of subtle psychological warfare, was:

“Hi, what’s your name?”

And his desk buddy with the black hair smiled and said, “Inez.”

“That’s a pretty name,” Cam offered, and her smile turned shy as she giggled and said _thanks_. “I’m Cameron.”

“Hi, Cam.”

“Everyone calls me Cameron.”

“Okay!”

She never calls him Cameron.

+

It’s good for years. They’re happy, or at least seventy percent happy, which is about as much as one could hope for from two living human beings, for _years._ Cam always thinks of it like a justification; for what, he doesn’t want to know.

He knows her. He knows every inch of her body, the meaning of every subtle movement and microexpression, all of it. To others, she might be unpredictable, but that’s not what she’s been to him for a long time, and Cam’s always had a weakness for the predictable, for the unchanging. He is so weak for it that he doesn’t even care when the predictable becomes somewhere next to hellish, except, of course, for when he does.

But he has learned her as he grows, she has learned him as she grows, and they’re bound together, as close to soulmates as any two people can be, and as time goes on it’s not that she changes, or that he changes, it’s that they become more themselves.

It’s a pity they’re both awful.

+

They take their first drink together when she sneaks out some of her father’s least expensive bourbon, which is, of course, still expensive, and that’s the start of something, unless it isn’t, because it’s not like they do anything but gag at the taste. They’re twelve years old. They don’t get a taste for alcohol for a few years yet.

Cam still thinks back on it sometimes, how he was there for this hallmark moment in her life, how she was there for his, and wonders if that’s relevant at all.

Inez is an angry drunk only after a few drinks. Before that, she is perfectly affectionate, perfectly herself, though, to be fair, herself becomes angrier and angrier as time goes on, or maybe she doesn’t. She’s always been passionate, always been the type to talk over people. Maybe that’s Cam, though. Maybe he made her that way because _he_ was always trying to talk over her. He’s quieter now. He’s the quiet one, the steady one.

(The first time she hits him, he is entirely caught off guard until he’s very much not, because when he looks back on their entire relationship, on the way they’ve both always held on too tight and how their fights are getting nastier and nastier and how Inez has really managed to reach new and exciting heights of cruelty in the past couple of years, what with the stress of her job and his job and being apart so much, this seems like a logical conclusion.

Except it’s not a conclusion.

Inez cries and she fusses and she puts antiseptic on his split lip and says, oh, she’s so sorry, just like she always says when she hurts him with her words and like he never says when he hurts her with his because she fucking deserves it, she always starts it, and he ignores her until she begs for forgiveness.

Then he gives it, because she’s suffered enough, and it’s not like she’ll ever do it again. She’s too sensitive a soul for that, and Cam would never, and they’ve been together so long that they’re practically the same person, or at least they’re each one side of the other.

But Cam realizes very quickly that they’re actually quite different in ways he hadn’t noticed.

For example, Inez is an angry drunk.)

Cam is not an angry drunk, or a happy drunk, or a sad drunk, or anything but a drunk.

He goes into finance just like his father.

Inez says he drinks too much, and then, in the next breath, says that she can’t blame him.

He says she drinks too much, and also that he can’t blame her, because she may have had the idea to steal that bourbon when she was twelve, but he was the one who gave her one of those little bottles of vodka when they were both sixteen and sitting under the tree in her backyard where they used to play in the treehouse. The treehouse was rotting by then, which is almost definitely a heavy-handed metaphor for something, but, as Inez says, Cam is _not_ the creative one between the two of them.

She’s very talented, he’ll always say. At first he said it because he’s proud, now it’s just because it’s true.

Cam is glad that Inez’s paintings really are brilliant, even though he doesn’t understand them and will say so when he’s at his worst, which is most of the time. She cries the first time he actively insults them, wonders why people buy shit that a five year old could fingerpaint, surly from an argument yesterday that ended in Inez calling him useless or stupid or worthless or heartless or _something,_ he doesn’t remember, but he definitely cried.

(If she’s going to tell him what he is, he’ll be it.)

He doesn’t apologize. They never apologize, at least not with words. Inez tends to get him things, both to appease him and to remind him that she makes more money than him, as if he cares ( _please,_ he’s a modern man and jealousy over his wife making more money than him, a man who already makes a rather tidy sum, is so yesterday), and he just tends to not mention any of it and be pleasant until the next argument. Inez forgives very easily.

It’s just like when they were happy together, Cam thinks, as long as they don’t pay attention to the times that they’re not.

+

Cam cuts himself shaving and lets the blood run down his face when he goes to breakfast, a spark of absurd, inexplicable hope lighting in his chest. Inez is on her way to a meeting, and she only glances at him. She frowns, skims her fingers over the skin of her cheek, but then catches sight of the clock on the microwave and swears, and only says _bye_ when she leaves.

Cam is inexplicably heartbroken.

He hopes the cut bleeds for the whole entire day, or at least until Inez comes home and mentions it and wipes the blood away and dabs on antiseptic the way she does when she makes him bleed by accident.

But it just scabs over.

+

“Your fights are getting worse,” Paul, one of those friends Cam sort of made at work who Inez invited over and who they then both charmed, says one night when he and Georgia are over for dinner.

(Cam and Inez are very good at making friends together. Their friends even care about them, which is a minor issue.)

Cam makes himself look surprised. “Oh?”

It’s a little concerning, actually. He wasn’t aware that their friends _knew_ that they had fights.

He and Inez are supposed to be the perfect childhood sweethearts, the ones with the nice house—not including the junkyard some blocks away, but it did make the house cheaper, and they might have been well on their way to being wealthy when they bought it, but they were still rather young and decided that it gave the area _character,_ because they are both idiots; still, it is _beautifully_ decorated with absolutely zero input from Cam—and who finish each other’s sentences. The ones who love each other just _terribly._

Paul tells him, “You’re being cold to each other.”

Cam clears his throat. “It’s not that we’re fighting. We’re just tired.”

“Maybe you should stop throwing so many dinner parties,” Paul says lightly. “They’re stressing you two out, Cameron.”

Cam would really rather not.

He likes throwing dinner parties. He’s very good at organizing them and at being lovely and charming, which means that Inez saying that he’s not socially adept or good at anything that’s not brutally practical is untrue, and it also gives him an excuse to not be alone with Inez.

Cam wonders if their friends have realized that the number of dinner parties thrown corresponds with exactly how much conflict there is between Cam and Inez, and very much hopes not, because he himself only just realized that, and is feeling a bit shaken about it.

Cam laughs a little. “Inez had that big gallery opening a few days ago. She’s just a little stressed. I let her be.”

He does. He didn’t even yell back the other night, just nursed a glass of red wine and sighed when she ended up pouring it over his head, irate at him for not listening to the same old tirade. At least it wasn’t hot coffee.

He has always been able to dodge the hot coffee, because Inez never actually tries to hit him with it. She wouldn’t go there, she loves him too much.

Paul smiles gently. “Maybe you should try marriage counseling.”

Cam smiles back. “Maybe you should mind your own business.”

A few years later, Paul is one of the people who’s invited to _that_ dinner party, the one that ends with Cam trying to flip the table—not successfully; in his defense, it’s actually a really big table, and made of mahogany to boot—and everyone scattering as Inez throws all their good china at him and they scream familiar nonsense at each other.

Paul and his wife, as well as one other frustratingly lovely couple, are the only friends of theirs who actually stick around. They come by a few days after the whole unfortunate situation with the police is resolved, and they bring a casserole.

Cam is mildly confused, because that’s what you’re supposed to do when someone dies, and everyone involved in this situation is notably, painfully alive.

He invites them in, though, and Inez comes to sit next to him. It’s that calm before the storm there always is when they have a big fight, especially when Inez manages to physically harm Cam, which she did, what with the bloody gash on his arm and all, and they both try their best to mend things because that’s what they should do.

Paul and Georgia are good friends.

They tell them, _we’re here for you._ They tell them, _we love you both and you’re going to be okay._

Cam and Inez give each other a look that probably reads as loving, to anybody else.

It’s actually more like a conversation, because they know each other well enough that they can communicate with just a look.

They conversation goes something like, _These two are idiots, aren’t they?_

_We’re going to drive them away._

_Whether we want to or not._

It doesn’t matter who says what.

+

Cam goes to his favorite bar after work, a place that Uriah complains is “for yuppies” but makes a killer martini. In spite of the yuppieness, he’s going there to meet Uriah, who is the only friend of his who’s not also Inez’s friend, which means that Inez hates him and so he and Cam had an entirely fake falling out five years ago. They’ve known each other almost as long as Cam and Inez have known each other.

Uriah notices the concealer on his face almost immediately, and Cam curses the moment that Uriah got into drag, though it is the only reason Cam is as good at applying concealer as he is. Inez was the one who taught him first, but Uriah was much better at it.

In any case, the whole thing sets Uriah off yet again, though in an entirely different way than Cam set Inez off (yet again) yesterday.

It was really his own fault, he says, though he honestly can’t remember exactly what he did that made her throw a wooden pear at him. But he gave as good as he got.

“What, you hit her?” Uriah hisses even though he knows the answer.

Cam rolls his eyes, not nearly as offended as he was the first time Uriah asked that. “No. But I did make myself bigger, like a cat. It was very threatening, you know how tall I am. And I yelled a lot. It was hurtful.”

“None of that is something to be proud of. You know what you should do?”

“Let me guess: walk out?”

“Walk. Out.”

“I was hurtful,” Cam murmurs, sagging against the bar counter. “I made her hate me. That’s the point.”

“What _point?_ All you two do is hate each other.”

“No, we love each other.”

“Sometimes you say that like it’s the same thing.”

“It is.”

“Uh, Cameron, it’s really not.”

“Can’t we talk about something else for once? It was just a fight.”

“Was she drunk?”

“We were both drunk.”

“She’s making you an asshole.”

“You’ve never known me without her.”

“I know you weren’t always an asshole. You were happy at one point. Don’t tell me you’re happy now.”

“I am happy,” Cam insists, because he should.

“I literally just said not to tell me you’re happy.”

“I love her, Uriah.”

“I’ve been with you through this whole thing, man.”

“Like I said: you haven’t.”

“Most of it, though.”

“Then you should know I can’t leave her, just like she can’t leave me. We’re both assholes, we’re perfect for each other.” _I wish she was fucking dead. I hate her. I hate myself. I hate her, I made her._

_When did we change?_

Cam honestly can’t even remember. They were happy, he really does remember that. They were happy, and then they were what they are now. They were everything to each other, and then they were everything to each other, but different.

“Come on…”

“We grew up,” Cam says. “That’s what happened. We grew up. She always had an artistic temperament, and I was always uptight, and together we’re just…”

“God, Cameron. Lately it’s like the only thing you do is make excuses.”

Cam rolls his eyes. “You were my best man.”

“Yeah! And I regret it pretty much every single day. I just wanted to support you, and you weren’t gonna leave her. What was I supposed to do?”

“Walk away?”

Uriah looks deeply, painfully sad, and Cam has to look elsewhere, anywhere that isn’t his best friend’s face.

His best friend. Inez was never his best friend. She was his sweetheart from day one.

“If I left, you wouldn’t have anyone,” Uriah says.

“I’d have Inez,” Cam replies shortly, and then he picks up his suit jacket and slings it over his shoulder.

“I’ll see you next week,” Uriah mutters, because he just can’t give up, apparently. Cam should give him lessons, he’s a pro by now.

“Fine,” Cam says, and then he gets into his Mercedes and drives home. When he walks into the parlor, Inez is there to greet him.

She’s wearing a pretty dress and a pretty smile, and Cam feels nothing but empty and a little angry. He wants to say something cutting, something that’ll make her cry (he can’t seem to do that anymore), but she just walks up to him and puts her hands on him, rubs them up and down his arms.

Cam wraps his arms around her waist and presses his lips to hers, pulls back and lets one of the hands on her waist travel up her spine so he can tangle his fingers in her hair so it’ll hurt if she tries to pull away. Her lips quirk up in a smile and she fully embraces him, buries her face in his neck, breathes in his overall unremarkable scent that she insists is unlike any she’s ever encountered. She digs her long acrylic nails into his back. He doesn’t welcome the pain, but he doesn’t fight it. He wonders if he counts as a masochist, and thinks that he might. Why else would he stay?

Now he wonders if this means that Inez is a masochist too. He has so many questions. They are all unanswerable, in the grand scheme of things, except for the ones that she might be able to answer.

So, unanswerable.

Before she hid her face against him, she looked tired, almost ill. Cam wonders if he ought to be concerned about the fact that a part of his mind immediately splits off into the same fantasy every time she seems even vaguely in danger of getting sick: she goes to the doctor, with him in tow, of course, and there is a health scare that turns out to be more than just a scare. She is given some months to live, and it’s very devastating, and at the end of it all she is gone and he is free. Throughout the illness—long, but under a year, so that it doesn’t drag on—he is a doting husband.

He does everything in his power to make her last months perfect. He has the energy, because he knows she’ll be out of his hair soon enough. He loves her more than he has in years, now that their time together on this blessed green Earth is limited. After she dies, he mourns and celebrates in turn, though the celebration is only internal. When he is asked, or when it comes up, he will do right by her and say she was a good wife, because in those last few months, she will be.

She’ll be all the parts of herself that he hates and loves, but even if she’s mostly the parts of herself that are the most unpleasant, there’ll be an excuse. She’ll be dying, after all.

Cam thinks that yes, he probably ought to be concerned about his dearest wish being that his wife will get a devastating terminal illness, and he also thinks that the time for concern is long, long past.

He can’t think of anything else that’ll allow them to be happy together ever again is the problem, with all of these years dragging on in front of them. It’s all downhill from here, but there’s no light at the end of the tunnel, such a hopeless future that Cam will go as far as to mix metaphors to attempt to get across said hopelessness.

He carefully tugs his fingers loose from her hair. He wants it to hurt a little, but he doesn’t even get a flinch, which seems terribly unfair. He always gives her a wince at _least,_ and he’s never even hit her—doesn’t have the heart for it—so she should at least try to put on a show of being in as much pain as he is. It’s only fair.

She pulls back, steps away, runs a hand down his shoulder and turns her back to him to go into the kitchen. The water starts running, and Cam assumes that she’s doing dishes, on account of the fact that she does dishes a lot, and he actively refuses to do them. She once threw some fine china at him over that, but he didn’t mind terribly—they were both very drunk.

It’s one of his proudest tricks, never doing the fucking dishes and using far more than necessary, because it tends to distract her from him while annoying her at the same time.

He looks at her retreat and thinks, fondly, _I hope you die._

Of course, he could leave like Uriah is always suggesting he do, but also he can’t, not of his own volition. He can never explain it well enough to Uriah, but he can understand it in his heart. He loves her too much, she needs him too much, he needs her too much. She makes things interesting, and besides, it’s been over a decade. How can he give up two decades over some—what did Uriah call it?—‘fucked up physical and psychological abuse?’ He wants someone to be in love with him, and he’ll never find somebody who’s not Inez. It’s a little thing called loyalty.

Uriah is the only one of their friends who suggests leaving. The others, Paul and Georgia, Braden and Fatima from that couples mixer they attended some years ago, continue to attempt to reassure the two of them that it’s darkest before the dawn.

They are, of course, still very wrong. There is absolutely no way that this is as bad as it can get, because, as Inez constantly reassures him, Cam has a talent for ruining things, and, as he constantly reassures Inez, mildly bitter that she got to that particular soul-crushing accusation first (she always verbalizes soul-crushing truths first!), she has that talent in spades as well. Considering those facts, they’re going to be figuring out new and exciting ways to ruin themselves and each other for their whole lives unless some miracle happens that allows them to split up.

(Cam’s a little, tiny bit afraid that he would go back to her if he left, even if it were vaguely against his will. He doesn’t think about that much, and certainly not aloud anymore after Uriah sent him about seven meticulously researched papers about the insidious psychological dependence that domestic abuse incites.

Cam read them all, but only because he likes reading and can never bring himself to keep anything he starts unfinished. Then he spent a week daydreaming about the battered woman defense.)

Maybe they don’t even have to split up, another part of his brain says, as usual. Maybe they just need a change of scenery. Something more extreme than leaving town, though.

_I hope we both die._

That seems fair.

That way, Cam won’t have to live without her, and if there is an afterlife, he can either seek her out or not.

He hopes he’ll have that choice. To seek her out first, that is.

He very much hopes Hell doesn’t exist.

Sometimes he mostly just hopes that there is no afterlife at all, so that none of it will be an issue. He’ll just be away from her.

He’s standing in the doorway to the kitchen, leaning against it, and Inez pauses in her dishwashing and looks at him. Her eyes are a little wary and a little amused. Her smile is gentle. Her hands are occupied. This is always when he remembers how beautiful and perfect she is. It’s when he remembers the good times, and how she was just lovely today, and how intoxicating her kisses are, and why he stays. He’s not stupid enough to leave someone he’s loved so long.

“Hey, what’s up?” she asks.

“Nothing,” he says in response. “I just love you.”

+

Cam knows that good people would care more about fixing themselves and each other. Good people would not feel schadenfreude over the suffering of their life partner. Good people would take the suggestion of their stupidly good married-couple friends and go to marriage counseling and then probably split up when the marriage counselor gave up on them. Good people would let go.

They’re not good people, that’s the crux of their problem.

Cam’s greatest question in this life is whether they never were, or if they made each other this way.


End file.
